News Introducing Fact Trek
- Thread starter Harvey
- Start date
There's another wrinkle in the fabric, and I might have gotten this from Shatner (Star Trek Memories) or Justman / Solow (Inside Star Trek), but apparently Roddenberry would attend women's fittings, put his hands on the actress to tug and adjust the garments, and he would demand that hemlines be shorter than Theiss wanted.
And that factor, GR overriding Theiss, has to be why the uniforms at times looked like a shirt with no trousers:
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x14hd/balanceofterrorhd590.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x09hd/daggerofthemindhd238.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x09hd/daggerofthemindhd237.jpg
And that factor, GR overriding Theiss, has to be why the uniforms at times looked like a shirt with no trousers:
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x14hd/balanceofterrorhd590.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x09hd/daggerofthemindhd238.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x09hd/daggerofthemindhd237.jpg
On page 20 of Designing the Future there's a photo of a Madison Furniture chair which the caption identifies as being the one on which Jefferies based the Captain's chair.
It is not. The caption is wrong. The only element it shares with the Enterprise chair is the wooden arm rests.
In fact there are quite a few photo references extant for the Madison company armchair model that was used; it was used without modification to the padded leather cushions or other upholstered elements.
It is not. The caption is wrong. The only element it shares with the Enterprise chair is the wooden arm rests.
In fact there are quite a few photo references extant for the Madison company armchair model that was used; it was used without modification to the padded leather cushions or other upholstered elements.
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Thank you, I was just yesterday looking at that and thought it wasn't quite right, but I don't know anything about the subject.
There's a still frame floating around from an episode of Mission: Impossible (filmed literally next door to Star Trek) which shows a Madison chair as set decoration. It has both arms and the black vinyl or PVC (?) upholstery. It looks very much like the exact model used on the bridge.
See, this is what bugs me about every Trek non-fiction book. With the exception of Lost Scenes, I can't think of one that doesn't repeat some game of telephone fan history or doesn't get some factual details wrong. The recent TMP VFX book does both.
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We are literally students who know more than our professors at this point.
But that it were so. Lots of stuff posted on this board shows how much bad information lives.
Part of the problem is people don't bother to look beyond The Usual Suspects as sources, so you get the TMP VFX book repeating erroneous descriptions of proposed films like 1975's Star Trek II (never called The God Thing), etc. etc.
"A wide selection of fabric textures are available for upholstery."
Am curious where the ad is from. After an hour looking, unable to find any images of this chair online but plenty of images of the one from the book.
All sources have errors and biases, in Trek or anything else. Even the most diligent researchers will make mistakes, being only human. Which is why the kind of error-checking Fact Trek does is so valuable.
Look again. The upholstery design is different. It's not a matter of "fabric textures."
In particular, the model pictured in the book has a shorter back built on a flat wooden frame - no curvature, with a single upholstered wedge cushion. The TV swivel chair is a more complex design.
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The phrase you're looking for is "sloppy research." Stop making excuses for sloppy research.
Yeah, these are products being pumped out for a consumer base that is critical only in the sense of devoting a lot of social time to nitpicking but known to be willing to pay for just about anything that's branded.
You build new assertions on old assertions and cite them. How it works. You can't research how good each source is. The world runs on trust.
Although, a good history I just read did make comments on the ancient historians and their biases and emphases on things other than literal facts.
There are lots and lots of things that get passed on and built upon, that are erroneous. In every field.
I'll repeat I've seen Cash Markman cited in a PhD dissertation on music cues and othering.
My problem is with the article's implied assertion. Writers claim X as a cause (or possible cause) of Y all the time.
A very good historiography prof I had said X isn't a CAUSE unless IF you remove it mentally Y does not happen. Or happens way differently.
So, if it's a cause, then we would postulate
if Trek stuck with trousers for its female officers . . .
then miniskirts do not become a big fashion phenomenon in the 20th C.
Nope.
Although, a good history I just read did make comments on the ancient historians and their biases and emphases on things other than literal facts.
There are lots and lots of things that get passed on and built upon, that are erroneous. In every field.
I'll repeat I've seen Cash Markman cited in a PhD dissertation on music cues and othering.
My problem is with the article's implied assertion. Writers claim X as a cause (or possible cause) of Y all the time.
A very good historiography prof I had said X isn't a CAUSE unless IF you remove it mentally Y does not happen. Or happens way differently.
So, if it's a cause, then we would postulate
if Trek stuck with trousers for its female officers . . .
then miniskirts do not become a big fashion phenomenon in the 20th C.
Nope.
That's true of course, but there are well-established standards to help address that problem. If source citations are published, even if the reader can't check them all themselves they can at least get a feel for the depth of the author's research, and the author takes on an extra level of responsibility for reviewing and organizing the citations, knowing that the work can be checked.
But it's not surprising that many writers don't bother; if the readers don't care, why should they?
The chair design in the book photo uses the same arms as the chair used to create Kirk's. Every other piece down to the design of the frame is different.
Okay, you're wrong but if you want to go on like this, feel free. I showed you what's so and what's not, and I explained it.
Okay, you're wrong but if you want to go on like this, feel free. I showed you what's so and what's not, and I explained it.
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Well, that's untrue, and I'm presuming that by "good" you mean "reliable." There are, unfortunately, many instances of reference works that are clearly filled with numerous errors. You yourself provided at least one example.
Yes, you can research how good each source is, by comparing it against other sources and verifying its own citations. That's basic to how research works in the first place. It's the whole reason any proper scholarly or nonfiction text includes footnotes or endnotes, to confirm where it got its information so that readers and researchers can check the original sources for themselves rather than just taking things on trust. As J.T.B. said, there are established standards for this kind of thing. It's absolutely not about blind trust, not if it's done with any degree of scholarly competence.
Of course that's true, but the response to that is to try to identify and minimize the errors as much as possible, not just shrug them off as inevitable.
I took his meaning to be you can't research each citation. Which, in practical terms, is true for most of us.
